Bly, Nellie. Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. New York: The Pictorial Weeklies Company, 1890.

Description

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days is a book by journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, writing under her pseudonym, Nellie Bly. The chronicle details her 72-day trip around the world, which was inspired by the book, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. She carried out the journey for Joseph Pulitzer's tabloid newspaper, the New York World.

Allen, Thomas Gaskell, and William Lewis Sachtleben. Across Asia on a Bicycle. New York: The Century Co, 1894.

Description

This volume is made up of a series of sketches describing the most interesting part of a bicycle journey around the world,—our ride across Asia. We were actuated by no desire to make a “record” in bicycle travel, although we covered 15,044 miles on the wheel, the longest continuous land journey ever made around the world.

The day after we were graduated at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., we left for New York. Thence we sailed for Liverpool on June 23, 1890. Just three years afterward, lacking twenty days, we rolled into New York on our wheels, having “put a girdle round the earth.”

Our bicycling experience began at Liverpool. After following many of the beaten lines of travel in the British Isles we arrived in London, where we formed our plans for traveling across Europe, Asia, and America. The most dangerous regions to be traversed in such a journey, we were told, were western China, the Desert of Gobi, and central China. Never since the days of Marco Polo had a European traveler succeeded in crossing the Chinese empire from the west to Peking.

Crossing the Channel, we rode through Normandy to Paris, across the lowlands of western France to Bordeaux, eastward over the Lesser Alps to Marseilles, and along the Riviera into Italy. After visiting every important city on the peninsula, we left Italy at Brindisi on the last day of 1890 for Corfu, in Greece. Thence we traveled to Patras, [pg xii]proceeding along the Corinthian Gulf to Athens, where we passed the winter. We went to Constantinople by vessel in the spring, crossed the Bosporus in April, and began the long journey described in the following pages. When we had finally completed our travels in the Flowery Kingdom, we sailed from Shanghai for Japan. Thence we voyaged to San Francisco, where we arrived on Christmas night, 1892. Three weeks later we resumed our bicycles and wheeled by way of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to New York.

During all of this journey we never employed the services of guides or interpreters. We were compelled, therefore, to learn a little of the language of every country through which we passed. Our independence in this regard increased, perhaps, the hardships of the journey, but certainly contributed much toward the object we sought—a close acquaintance with strange peoples.

During our travels we took more than two thousand five hundred photographs, selections from which are reproduced in the illustrations of this volume.

Description

Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being.

Description

The story of exploration is the story of history's greatest adventures, resounding with tales of courage and of achievement in the face of impossible odds. It is a story that begins far back in the mists of time, and that even now is not complete.

For, although little of the earth remains unknown, man is constantly seeking new worlds to conquer, or fresh deeds to dare.

This atlas tells the story of man's gradual discovery of his world. The form was chosen so that the route each pioneer followed could be plotted in detail; and the maps showing the explorers' journeys are augmented by others, picturing the world as it was thought to be in the time of the explorers, and showing political and geographical features of their day. The maps are linked and amplified by the text, which describes the discoverers, their motives, and their explorations into the unknown world.

In an introduction compiled posthumously from the writings of Sir Francis Chichester, one of the present century's greatest adventurers. Sir Francis describes the search for challenge and achievement that was the moving spirit of his life, and of the lives of many of the explorers who have helped to open up the world. Thereafter, first in chronological, then in geographical framework, the history of discovery unfolds.

From the first wanderings of primitive men. and civilization's earliest recorded expeditions, it leads through the epic journeys of exploration to man's latest adventure—the space flights of the present century.

McIlrath, H. Darwin. Around the World on Wheels for the Inter Ocean the Travels and Adventures in Foreign Lands of Mr. and Mrs. H. Darwin McIlrath. [Chicago]: Inter Ocean Pub. Co., 1898.

Description

When I consented to the plan of going around the world I intended to make the trip alone, but my wife pleaded so hard to accompany me that I finally concluded to take her. She is a brave little girl, and rather than considering her a burden, I now look upon her as having been of great help to me on our memorable voyage. Aside from the fact that she is an expert wheelwoman, she is also an unerring shot. Nerve she possesses in abundance, as all will agree after reading of the adventures which befell us.

Stevens, Thomas. Around the World on a Bicycle. London: Sampson Low, 1887.

Description

Richly entertaining account, first published in 1887, of the first man to ride a bicycle around the world. Stevens rode his high-wheeler from San Francisco to Boston, then sailed to London for the ride across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

De Windt, Harry. From Pekin to Calais by Land. London: Chapmann and Hall, 1889.

Description

There are two Englishmen at present living in Shangai who have travelled overland from Europe to China. I was told, when there, that these gentlemen are continually receiving letters from England asking for information relative to the journey from Petersburg to Pekin and vice versa, via the Gobi Desert and Siberia. It was mainly owing to this circumstance that I publish these pages, for I fear the general reader will find little of interest in this account of a monotonous pilgrimage through Europe and Asia....

Gladding, Effie Price. Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway. New York: Brentano’s, 1915.

Description

From the Pacific to the Atlantic by the Lincoln Highway, with California and the Virginias and Maryland thrown in for good measure! What a tour it has been! As we think back over its miles we recall the noble pines and the towering Sequoias of the high Sierras of California; the flashing water-falls of the Yosemite, so green as to be called Vernal, so white as to be called Bridal Veil; the orchards of the prune, the cherry, the walnut, the olive, the almond, the fig, the orange, and the lemon, tilled like a garden, watered by the hoarded and guarded streams from the everlasting hills; and the rich valleys of grain, running up to the hillsides and dotted by live oak trees. We recall miles of vineyard under perfect cultivation. We see again the blue of the Pacific and the green of the forest cedars and cypresses. High Lake Tahoe spreads before us, with its southern fringe of emerald meadows and forest pines, and its encircling guardians, lofty and snow-capped. The high, grey-green deserts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming stretch before us once more, and we can smell the clean, pungent sage brush. We are not lonely, for life is all about us. The California quail and blue-jay, the eagle, the ground squirrel, the gopher, the coyote, the antelope, the rattlesnake, the big ring snake, the wild horse of the plains, the jack rabbit, the meadow lark, the killdeer, the red-winged blackbird, the sparrow hawk, the thrush, the redheaded wood-pecker, the grey dove, all have been our friends and companions as we have gone along. We have seen them in their native plains and forests and from the safe vantage point of the front seat of our motor car.

Murphey, Claude Charles. Around the United States by Bicycle. Detroit: Press of Raynor & Taylor, 1906.

Description

Clarence M. Darling and Claude C. Murphey, age 19 and 20 respectively, left Jackson, Michigan, on May 2, 1904, to make a trip by bicycle through every state and territory within the boundary lines of the United States proper, namely, fortv-five states, four territories, and the District of Columbia. The trip was the result of a wager.

Upon the success of the tour a purse of five thousand dollars would be won by the two contestants providing that they lived up to all the terms and stipulations of the wager. The conditions were that they were to start on this long journey penniless, while on the trip they were neither to beg, work, borrow, nor steal, all the expenses of the tour to be met by the profits resulting from the sale of an aluminum card-receiver or ash-tray, a fac-simile of which is given on one of the following pages.